Outlook 2016 (for Mac) Email Formatting/ Image Display Issue

I've been working today on an interesting issue with email formatting when you send HTML emails between the Mac and PC versions of Outlook. The issue only seems to occur one way - from Outlook 2016 on a Mac to Outlook 2013 on a Windows machine. In addition to font issues it also seems to be doing something "weird" with a PNG image I've embedded as a test.

So here's the problem. On the left is the test signature in Outlook 2016 (Mac) and on the right is the signature as it appears when it arrives in Outlook 2013 (PC);

As you can see the image shows that when the email arrives in Outlook 2013 the colour of the image changes (although if you save the file and open it in preview it is actually still the same colour - it's the way it's rendered that's different, not the image itself).

Clicking "reply" (which lets you see the font information being used) shows that while the email signature was build using the font Calibri (which is installed on both devices) it's being rendered in Outlook using "Times New Roman".

From what I can see (i.e. "thank you google") it looks like Outlook 2016 isn't including font information in the email so Outlook 2013 is reverting to it's standard font. The problem seems to persist if rather than using Outlook 2013 on a PC you use the mail client on an iPhone - this suggests Outlook 2016 is doing some odd rather than 2013 just not displaying it correctly.

What's going on with the image is a mystery! Which slightly deepens if you copy/ paste your email signature into Mail on the Mac. You still get the image problem, but not the font problem. However if you save the image to disk from the Outlook signature, open in preview, and then copy/paste into the email signature in Mail from there you don't get the same issue. Again the light image is also visible on an iPhone which suggests it's the information in the email message being rendered that is causing the issue.


Neither issue occurs if you use Apple Mail on a Mac, it's something specifically done by the latest version of Outlook.

Should I work out how to address this I'll make another post, just thought this was odd enough to justify a specific post ...

Mac OS X: Unlocking Your Desktop

There are many reasons for unlocking your desktop, but a great many more for leaving it locked the first of which is that the Desktop is more than simply a folder on OS X. Having lots of files on your desktop will affect the performance of your Mac (see here, here, and here).

However there are a number of cases where you might want to, temporarily, unlocking the desktop so you can save files to it.


First of all bring up finder and right-click your Desktop and select "Get Info";

Desktop Folder Properties

There is a check-box at the top called "Locked", un-check it.

And you're done ... Easy wasn't it?

Mac OS X: Fixing "Your screen shot can't be saved" Error Message.

In order to save a screen shot when you're running Mac OS X (I'm on 10.7.4) you press;

Cmd + shift + 4 

The mouse will then turn into a cursor allowing you to select an area of the screen to take the screen shot of. Clearly an incredibly useful feature particularly if you're looking to produce documents (or blogs!) which include lots of helpful screen shots!

The problem is that if, like me, you have a locked desktop (and for the life of me I can't work out how it happened; but I like it and don't want to unlock it!) the first time you go to use this you get the following error;

Error Message

The text of the error message reads; "Your screen shot can't be saved" and "You don't have permission to save files in the location where screen shots are stored."

(Just a little note for Apple - telling me where it's trying to save the screen shot would have been helpful, as would offering me the change to save it somewhere else!)

The problem is that the screen capture utility is set to save the screen shot to your Desktop and to fix this you  have essentially two options; change the location it's trying to save to to somewhere it can access (my preferred one!) or to unlock your desktop (a lot easier!)

To change the location you need to use Terminal. Bring up a terminal session (Cmd + Space > Terminal or go to the top right and click on the search and enter Terminal);

Copy/ Paste the following two lines (you'll notice your bars will refresh);


defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Downloads/

killall SystemUIServer

Close terminal and try again, the screen shot should now appear in your downloads folder (if you want it in Pictures just replace Downloads with Pictures in the first command above).

I'll blog unlocking your desktop separately.